‘Grief porn’ is, without question, one of the most bizarre phrases that has populated the 2020s. In recent months, the phrase has found itself regurgitated on social media when referring to Chloe Zhao’s recent film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. Are other phrases not apt enough, or in short abundance? Or are people right in their assessments? I knew that aside from the critical buzz surrounding Jessie Buckley’s performance, such a vast critical division was enough of a reason to see this film at the cinema.

To be transparent, I’ve never read Maggie O’Farrell’s novel. In getting that off my chest, I can begin assessing the film as my only source of understanding about the narrative. Whilst my knowledge of Shakespeare and his family life is relatively robust, I accept that Zhao’s adaptation of O’Farrell’s narrative is something unique and distant from the historical foundations of what I know. Undoubtedly, the film is a study of grief and motherhood, not necessarily of William Shakespeare and his play Hamlet. Paul Mescal’s Shakespeare is a character who is minimised, not because his grief doesn’t matter, but because his enigmatic celebrity status is a distraction. In truth, Jessie Buckley’s Agnes is the real focus of the film, and thankfully so. As the focal point of the film, she allows for a more meaningful assessment, helping the audience experience her grief both as the universal expression of motherhood and also in the raw and visceral ways that it impacts her.

After watching the film, despite some reservations about its cinematic mechanics, I found myself haunted by the delicacy with which the narrative unpicked the complexities of motherhood. In the characters of Agnes and William’s mother, Mary (Emily Watson), Zhao explores the reality for women and mothers who experience grief. Given the enduring impact of the film, I felt that the right poem to look at in comparison should be acutely linked to these themes. I happened upon this poem last year. And, thankfully, it is the right companion to Zhao’s Hamnet. Published in 2000, Janet McAdams’ poem ‘Leaving the Old Gods’ is a work of monumental pathos tracing the experience of loss and grief. Told mostly in the past tense, the speaker reevaluates the loss of their child (likely due to an abortion), recognising how she has since continued their life in avoidance. McAdams frequently engages with their Native American heritage in her poetry, and here the speaker invites such heritage into their reevaluation of grief and suffering. Like Agnes’ experience of loss in the film, ‘Leaving the Old Gods’ breaks apart the scaffolding of a life after loss, where the role of being a mother is challenged by the death of a child. For the poem’s narrator, the time that has passed since their child’s death balloons their mourning further, as they find themselves in recovery, despite society’s indifference to such a loss. The speaker, like Agnes, enacts a covenant between the body and a naturalistic, mythic fath allowing their grief to be medicated by their grounded synthesis with the natural world around them. Whereas Agnes worships the paganistic altar of the arboreal and botanical, the poem’s speaker relays a link to a Native American heritage that is gradually fading.

In Zhao’s film, the most striking scene is the titular Hamnet’s passing. Despite his best intentions of supporting his sister through her illness, Hamnet soon contracts and succumbs to a similar illness. Agnes’ grief in response to her son’s death is an earthshaking event. She becomes numb, she retreats into denial, she is paralysed by loss, and collapses into a puddle of helplessness. Her grief is explored as a multifaceted experience, where emotions collide. Buckley’s acting is mesmerising and unforgettable. Vocally, she oscillates between shrieks and abrupt silence. Because of this, the film goes beyond a subtle portrayal of maternal grief and imagines Agnes’ response as something raw and immense, even when it is restrained. The world around her hurries to move on and manage the fallout. William is shown to leave for London straight after returning to cradle his dead son. The household, though inhabited by suffering, is shown to endure beyond the event. However, for Agnes, her grief becomes a form of stasis as she is abandoned by her surroundings.

In McAdams’ poem, stillness is staged in a similar form: “To them my body is a fact casual as the weather.” The metaphor of the speaker’s body being compared to the weather is a clever nod to their awareness of how they exist as normal, displaying no signs of struggle or grief. However, the symbolism of the weather helps us understand that they are prone to sudden or severe changes, a symptom of what they have endured. Like Agnes, the speaker’s emotional state fluctuates. The immediacy of Hamnet’s passing subjects Agnes to a raw, unpredictable shroud of grief, where she is unable to mask her feelings. Yet, for the poem’s speaker, the “ten years” that have passed have helped them camouflage their emotions.

The speaker also recognises the value of their culture, and its bond with the natural world as a meditative feature to their grief. They remember that on the day of the abortion, “it rained the way it rains in the New World. Leaves struck the window like daggers.” The violence of the simile and the verb “struck” suggest that the sterile, almost clinical qualities of modern society are intrusive and unsatisfactory for the speaker. They later emphasise these feelings:

“I didn't think about God

but the ones we used to worship

the ones who want your heart still

beating, who load you with gold

and lure you to sleep

deep in the cenote.”

Here, the speaker admits stepping aside from the convention of Christian prayer as a means of healing, using italics to highlight how the monotheistic, Christian God isn’t theirs, and that the culture that they exist within does little to reassure them during times of suffering. Instead, in referencing “the ones we used to worship”, the speaker informs the reader that their solace exists more so in the “Old Gods” of the title, the pantheistic hierarchy of deities that at one time were more prominent. The past tense of “used” suggests that the speaker’s grief for their unborn child mirrors the grief they feel for their traditions and culture. In joining these two experiences, the speaker connects personal loss with a loss of place in a world that is unlike the one they once knew. This is continued when they imagine their child’s spirit being tended to, lured to “sleep deep in the cenote.” A gorgeous yet mournful image, this helps the reader understand how the child is now safe and secure within the landscapes of their ancestors and their people. The “cenote”, a naturally formed sinkhole, often exposing luminous, azure bodies of water, is a location deeply rooted in the cultures of Native American and Mayan peoples. Beyond this, it symbolises the submerged sheltering of their child’s spirit beneath the earth, like the riches of an undiscovered land. For them, motherhood is rejuvenated despite the absence of a child. Instead, it is restored through the remembrance of their beliefs and heritage, as part of something greater and holistic.

In Hamnet, Zhao returns time and time again to Agnes’ ritual behaviours and worship of nature. Whereas this does help contextualise a rift between pagan culture and the dominance of Christian doctrines throughout Britain, it operates as a personal division, where Agnes’ reliance on her own mother’s pagan values forces her to confide in the roots and soil more so than the people around her. Both before and after Hamnet’s passing, Agnes is shown to attend to the altar of a large tree that sits atop a mysterious cave. Like the “cenote” in the poem, this cave and tree invite us to find imagery akin to that of a womb. The hollowed-out sanctuary of space beneath the earth is both haunting and resolute throughout the film. It routinely signposts the audience, signaling us to its importance as a world saddled beside another world. For Agnes and her pagan reliance on herbs and old teachings, this environment cradles and comforts her, gifting her space far from the cold, walled-off Stratford-Upon-Avon. Agnes' sadness is amplified in the confines of her home and its representation of Christian civilisation, because it is where Hamnet passed. Yet, the verdant, leafy pastures of the woodland provide comfort. This idea is furthered when Hamnet’s spirit is seen exiting the Globe’s stage at the end of the film. Here, where Agnes’ grief appears to soften and move, the sight of her son venturing into the backstage regions, where the backdrop of a green, wooded scenery dominates, is revelatory. His smiling face and the ease with which he ‘moves on’ highlights how, for both Hamnet and his mother, his ‘return’ to the natural world is in spiritual accordance with his mother’s beliefs. Rather than angelic or heavenly iconography, the imagery of the backdrop is an alleviation of grief, where pain is traded for an acceptance that Hamnet is deep within the cave where his own mother’s spirit seems to reside.

Agnes’ worship of the natural world is not only a personal sanctuary but also a conduit through which the weight of maternal grief across generations is felt. Mary Shakespeare’s recollections of lost children remind us that Agnes’ mourning exists within a historical continuum, where the death of a child was tragically common. In this light, her ritualised communion with trees, soil, and hidden spaces becomes both an intimate act of solace and a connection to a lineage of women who have grieved in similar, unspoken ways. Mary Shakespeare’s quiet confession about the children she lost resonates deeply with Agnes’ own grief, anchoring her personal devastation within a historical reality. In the sixteenth century, child mortality was tragically common, and families routinely endured the deaths of infants and young children. Zhao frames Mary’s reflections not as mere exposition, but as a mirror to Agnes’ experience, reminding the audience that while her sorrow feels singular and earthshaking, it is not singular. By weaving historical reality into Agnes’ personal rituals, Zhao deepens the resonance of her grief, showing it as simultaneously intimate, timeless, and inexorably human.

In Hamnet, Chloe Zhao transforms personal and historical grief into a cinematic meditation that resists the reductive label of ‘grief porn’. Through Agnes’ visceral mourning, her ritualized communion with nature, and the echo of maternal loss across generations, the film immerses viewers in grief as a lived, transformative experience. The parallels with Janet McAdams’ ‘Leaving the Old Gods’, from the grounding of sorrow in natural and spiritual frameworks to the reshaping of motherhood after loss, reinforce that grief is both intimate and universal, tied to culture, memory, and the cycles of life. By weaving together film, history, and poetry, Zhao crafts a story that asks audiences not to spectate grief, but to inhabit it empathetically, appreciating its complexity, endurance, and quiet transcendence.